


lost to the light and the loving we need

by thatsparrow



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 06:36:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13698912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: The fourth time he pulls himself out of the pod, coughing up the remaining cryo-fluid from his lungs and feeling his recently-frozen systems kickstarting back to life, Eiffel realizes it's never going to get easier.--Or, Eiffel's missing days aboard the shuttle





	lost to the light and the loving we need

**Author's Note:**

> i had like four _Groundhog Day_ references in this before I found out it's canon that Eiffel's never seen the goddamn movie
> 
> title from "a comet appears" by the shins

The fourth time he pulls himself out of the pod, coughing up the remaining cryo-fluid from his lungs and feeling his recently-frozen systems kickstarting back to life, Eiffel realizes it's never going to get easier.

It's not the first thing he learns about surviving in deep space (arguably not even one of the first _thousand_ things he learns, thanks to Minkowski's voice pushing him to read through _Pryce & Carter_), nor is it the last, but it's the one that he always tricks himself into forgetting — the new rule of existence he has to relearn every time he pulls himself out of stasis. Starts each iteration by not so much climbing out of the cryo-pod as collapsing to the floor on these Bambi-unsteady legs—respiratory system torn between fighting to hack up the liquid still lining his lungs and trying to choke down air into his oxygen-starved cells, and always a coin flip which one wins out—and that's the point he has to remind himself that this whole thing fucking _sucks_.

If Minkowski or Lovelace were there, they'd give him a well-deserved kick in the ass and tell him to stop being such a fucking _child_. But they're not, and that's part of Eiffel's problem.

So he usually allows himself one extra moment to linger in self-pity (and, hey, at least _that's_ one resource he's in no danger of running short on) before pulling himself over to the console and getting to work. From there, it's a matter of burning the blast on the starboard thruster for all the juice it's got, portioning out just enough of Lovelace's stowed rations to keep his body from giving out entirely, and sending out another futile "mayday" message into deep space—keeping the broadcast going only as long as he can stomach the sound of his own voice—before resetting the timer for the cryo-stasis system.

And it's then, once he's laid down like some sort of fucked-up Sleeping Beauty—hair falling out in uneven clumps and fingernails grown brittle and skin stretched shrink-wrap tight over atrophying muscles—that Eiffel lets himself believe for a brief moment that, this time, things are going to get better. Listens to the machine whirring up a space-age lullaby, and feels the first shock of frostbite air before slipping into his periodically induced coma, and tells himself a lie — pretends that this will be the loop he wakes up feeling well-rested, that the thruster will burn for an extra half-second and correct his course by another couple thousand miles, that he won't feel the absence of his missing crewmembers like a physical fucking ache.

Spends those handful of seconds saying _fuck it_ to _Pryce & Carter _ no. 199—"Confront reality head-on"—just because he _can_ , and because if there's a chance for him to dream in cryo, he'd like for it to be about something good.

But it never gets easier—doesn't even get _close_ —and, eventually, the best Eiffel can hope for as he's falling asleep is that his senses might dull enough that he grows numb to the pain of it all.

He never gets quite that lucky.

 

—

 

He loses the last of his hair on his hundred-and-thirty-seventh day in the shuttle.

It doesn't come as a surprise — not when he's spent the past couple weeks waking from stasis to see strands of it left behind on the mattress, or running an absent hand over the back of his head to come away with clumps of the stuff caught between his fingers and hooked onto his nails. Eiffel's life has become nothing but a series of constants, and, really, the increasing familiarity of the color and shape of his scalp is just one more on the list.

So he knew the moment was coming, but, when it does, he finds that it still hurts more than he expected it would. Eiffel doesn't tend to consider himself any vainer than most—figures something like that should matter even less in deep space, no one around but himself and the warped reflections off the monitors the closest thing he has to a mirror—but it's jarring in the worst way the first time that he catches sight of himself and doesn't recognize the face staring back at him.

(Although, it sometimes feels as if he's been flying farther away from his past self every moment since boarding the _Hephaestus_ , and so maybe it's only fitting to lose one more point of familiarity with the Doug Eiffel he used to be.)

The day he loses the last of it, he spends an extra second staring at his new six-ball-smooth reflection in the watery-grey of the console screens, feeling out the curve of his skull under the skin and wondering if it will ever grow back.

Then again, it’s not likely he’ll even live long enough for the question to matter.

 

—

 

He wonders what it means — how quickly he imagines Minkowski's and Lovelace's voices before he imagines Hera's.

Eiffel understands hearing Minkowski as soon as he did, with the ship spinning like a top towards deep space, and every system blown out from Lovelace's dead-man's switch, and fear and frustration having too tight of a panic-grip hold on his muscles for him to process much of anything. In that moment, he’d needed Minkowski's sharp-edged words and unflinching commands to shake him into action more than he’d needed the reassurance he associates with Hera's comms-projected voice. So, he gets it — he’d needed an officer instead of a friend, and that's Minkowski.

And he understands hearing Lovelace, too. Remembers that moment of sitting in front of the ship's computers and running the numbers and realizing all of them spelled some kind of slow and hopeless end, and the answer to that particular bout of self-pity wasn't the stern familiarity of Minkowski—let alone Hera's banter and understanding—but the loveless slap and steel-honed barbs of Lovelace herself. He gets that one, too — he’d needed someone to kick his ass instead of hold his hand, and that's Lovelace's particular specialty.

So Eiffel gets it, but he doesn't get not hearing Hera _at all_. Understands feeling frustrated and confused enough to need the sort of bitter and unsympathetic medicine dished out by Minkowski and Lovelace, but doesn't understand how he could feel this fucking lonely and _never_ hear Hera. Doesn't understand how he could spend so many months in some kind of next-level solitary confinement and not even _once_ conjure up the voice of his best friend for company.

Sometimes he'll catch himself starting to say, "hey, Hera—" into the silence before remembering she's not wired into the ship. Whistles film franchise themes and waits for her to give him shit before remembering she can't hear him because she _isn't there_. Finds himself missing the periodic glitching in her voice more than he does his hair and fingernails.

It's difficult in the way everything is, now. The kind of shrapnel-shredded wound not even time could fix.

There are quieter moments in Eiffel's day-to-day—when he allows himself an extra hour or two of consciousness before slipping back into stasis because he just needs a fucking _break_ from it all—where he'll float somewhere over the ship's chrome-colored floor, and close his eyes, and pretend he can hear Hera's voice. Sits there in the black behind his eyelids and sees himself back in the _Hephaestus_ hovering over the comms panels, one of the deep-space transmissions playing something instrumental and soothing, and the familiar hum of the _Hephaestus'_ engines droning a lullaby in the background.

In the daydream, he'll lift his fingers from the comms desk and turn himself onto his back and lazily float a couple feet off the floor, staring up at the ceiling and seeing Hera in the rivets and paneling.

"Hey, Hera," he'll say, "you there?"

"Yes, Eiffel," she says, her voice carrying this familiar undercurrent of exasperation and amusement, and— _fuck_ —what Eiffel wouldn't do to hear it again. "I'm here."

(That's usually the point he starts to feel hot tears beading in the corners of his screwed-shut eyes and running salt-stained rivers over his cheeks and, even though he knows it's a waste of water he can't afford, he can never seem to bring himself to stop.)

 

—

 

He tries memorizing _Pryce & Carter _ just to see if he can. Just to have something to _do_. Sets them to the tune of "Mad World" by Tears for Fears to make it easier.

Gets all the way to no. 167 before he gives it up as a lost cause.

 

—

 

The days he's feeling particularly masochistic, Eiffel lets himself imagine the happy ending he knows he's never going to get.

When he plays it out in a daydream, it usually starts the same way — he's just finished sending out another desperate "mayday" message over the radio, and he's waiting for a few hopeful seconds with his head lowered over the monitors, and that's when he hears the scratch of static and the beautiful sound of someone else's voice broadcast through the speakers.

Sometimes, he imagines he's hearing the comms officer of the _Hermes_. Sometimes, it's Minkowski, or Lovelace, or Hilbert, and Eiffel paints the grey monolithic shape of the _Hephaestus_ in the space outside the window.

And from there, the daydream varies. Sometimes, he's given a physical in the med-bay of the _Hermes_ by an efficient but friendly crew, and they treat him to their reserve stores of powdered hot chocolate as he tells them about the _Hephaestus_ , and after he's wearing a clean uniform and a borrowed knit cap pulled low over his ears, they start making plans to retrieve the rest of Eiffel's crew.

(Eiffel doesn't know shit about the _Hermes_ , but he likes to imagine they've got a comms officer who's equally partial to pop culture trivia, and a captain who's a little more lax when it comes to smoking regulations.)

Sometimes, when he imagines his rescue coming at the hands of the _Hephaestus_ , he sees the airlock sliding open and it's Minkowski first through the doorway. Pulls him into a hug that's tight enough to leave bruises, and when she loosens her hold enough to look him over, Eiffel can see her eyes bright with relief and her cheeks damp with tears.

She usually says something like, "disappearing for over one-hundred days during an active mission, Officer Eiffel? That sort of thing is typically against protocol."

Eiffel laughs, and says, "sorry, Commander. It won't happen again."

Minkowski wraps him in another hug, her next words quiet, but fierce.

"Damn right, it won't."

 

—

 

After the water runs out, and the cryo pod short-circuits, and Eiffel understands with awful certainty that he's not making it off the shuttle alive, he starts thinking of all things he'll never get to do again. All the things he'd done for the last time, and hadn't even known.

Won't ever see the _Hephaestus_ again, or Wolf 359. Can't say he's entirely sad about that one, but he's surprised to find himself feeling somewhat nostalgic. More than that, though, never seeing the _Hephaestus_ means never seeing Minkowski, or Lovelace, or even Hilbert. No more makeshift Thanksgiving dinners in the mess hall, or games of Monopoly on the bridge, or quiet conversations while watching the station's slow orbit of the star.

He won't ever hear Hera's voice again—at least, not as anything more than a half-true figment spun up from his own subconscious. Eiffel doesn't remember if he ever told her how he felt, but he thinks she probably knows. Hopes that she does.

And once he starts thinking about the _Hephaestus_ , he realizes that he'll never learn if they make it back to Earth alive. Won't ever know if they get the happy ending the deserve. And then— _fuck_ —Eiffel realizes he doesn't know for a fact that they're not dead already. Doesn't know how much damage the blast from Lovelace's bomb did — doesn't know if it sent them skidding past the red line into the inescapable pull of Wolf 359.

It's an awful sharp-edged question sitting in his stomach, as Eiffel wonders whether or not he should be mourning them.

(He tells himself he's being ridiculous — can't imagine Minkowski or Lovelace as anything less than living and breathing and fighting with bruise-knuckled fists. Still, once he's pictured the fractured metal of the burning _Hephaestus_ , or the sight of Minkowski frozen and floating in space, he never manages to shake those thoughts entirely.)

Eiffel thinks about the smaller things, too. Like, he'll never see _Empire Strikes Back_ again, or find out if the Cubs win a World Series. Won't drive down a quiet highway at night, windows rolled down and heater vents angled towards his face, the wind loud in his ears and radio tuned to a classic rock station. He'll never flip through a high-school yearbook or catch up with a college friend over a cup of coffee at the hole-in-the-wall cafe down the street from his old apartment.

He won't ever go to the beach, and let the sun dry his tangle of salt-soaked hair as he rereads Tolkien behind a pair of cheap, gas-station sunglasses. Won't wait in line at an airport, or buy another lottery ticket. He'll never wrap another holiday or birthday gift.

He'll never see his daughter grow up.

It's then that Eiffel decides that this particular game fucking _sucks,_ and so he goes back to flipping through _Pryce & Carter_, because he thinks he might take a walk out the airlock if he's left alone with his own thoughts for another fucking second.

 

—

 

He doesn't believe it, when he first hears the voice coming through the radio. Has had this exact same daydream often enough that he assumes this is just another vivid fantasy. And that's the way the story would go, isn't it? All his hope run out like the expended water reserves, and the countdown for his remaining days ticking steadily towards zero, and that's when he gets his eleventh-hour stroke of luck.

It's too good a story to be true, and so of course Eiffel doesn't believe it.

But then the airlock door is sliding open and there's a new silhouette in the frame that fits the unfamiliar voice he'd been hearing over the comms, and that's when Eiffel lets himself start to hope. Stares at the broad shape of the man's shoulders, and the shadow he's casting across the panels, and dares to trust what he's seeing as something _real_.

The man introduces himself as Colonel Warren Kepler, and when he reaches out to shake Eiffel's hand, Eiffel can feel the warmth of his skin and the rough calluses on his palm and could cry from the relief of how fucking _solid_ Kepler feels. There's a small scar on the back of Kepler's right hand, and Eiffel's own dreams are never so detailed. And after spending the past few days learning to be okay with the promise of dying—after having written a half-dozen goodbye letters into the ship's computer just in case the shuttle is ever found—Eiffel doesn't know what the _fuck_ to do with any of this. Doesn't know how to process the idea of surviving. Doesn't know how to handle not being alone.

As he moves through the shuttle's airlock aboard a ship called the _Urania,_ Eiffel takes a slow breath and lets himself believe that, maybe, this will all turn out okay.

(Later, he'll think that he should've known better.)


End file.
